Things Like This: Movie Review

A charmless, soulless, meaningless rom-com.

Is Things Like This supposed to be about how overweight gay guys can find love too? Or is it about how insufferable assholes can find love? It’s a choice to make your lead character extremely rude to strangers and friends alike and then complain that he’s single because of his appearance. His boyfriend in the opening scene says he’s breaking up with him because he’s not hot enough and then corrects himself that it’s because he’s not hot enough and has a terrible personality.		2025 Directed by: Max Talisman Screenplay by: Max Talisman Starring: Max Talisman, Joey Pollari
Starting the movie with an awful lead character is a bad way to draw in your audience and the movie is not well enough written to overcome it. I really wanted to like this, I tried to like this, but the few redeeming qualities are followed up with random nonsense. A desperate need to create a body-positive gay rom-com, and the result is an off-putting story with gay relationships and rom-com tropes thrown in for no reason whatsoever. Rom-com tropes exist because of how often they fit the movie, it is so bizarre to include them when they don’t fit the movie. I don’t think the filmmakers know any screenwriting rules and the result is stuff thrown together with no meaning. Zack, an overweight insufferable asshole, meets Zack, a hot not-quite-an-asshole, by yelling at a bartender that he lost his wallet and he should get his drink for free, until hot Zack steps in and pays for his drink. Hot Zack is in a relationship but understandably ends it since he has nothing in common with his boyfriend. Zack and Zack go on a date and discover that they were each others’ first love back in middle school when they went to the same camp. I love that romance. That romance lasted for all of one night until hot Zack ends it… for no reason whatsoever. It’s like the filmmaker understands that the lead couple can’t get together this early in the movie so they have to get broken up but then gives no reason for the breakup. The rest of the movie is basically the structure of a romantic comedy with no reason given for any of it. While they’re apart, hot Zack (Joey Pollari) also loses his job in addition to having no place to live and is forced to find himself before continuing his relationship. Pollari does his best to add dimensions to his character even though the script tells him not to. The emotional arc to Zack is the best thing about this movie. My favourite part – in the sense that it is so, so bad it loops back around to funny – is when the lead couple reconnect at a high school prom and Zack sings an impromptu original song. Why? Who knows, there is no reason given for any of it. Other than the screenwriter understood that romantic comedies sometimes end with big musical numbers at weddings/parties/dances. Things Like This resembles a romantic comedy, it copies them without any of the meaning or charm.